"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Tuesday, 29 November 2016

Worry less about our neighbour to the south and more about here at home. We have a new plan for climate change that will mine another 10 or so dollars plus HST from your wallet each cold winter month just for heating your home with natural gas. Have not heard Trump come up with anything as stupid as this.

Many cannot afford electricity. It is crippling some businesses. We stopped burning coal and now cannot afford the alternatives.

Provincial and municipal planning has, for the most part, left us dependent on the car. Hit transportation fuel with all kinds of taxes and surcharges plus HST on top of it all. Better yet, throw a new tax it and more HST under the banner of carbon trading. Where does all this money go to cap or trade carbon?

Have not heard Trump come up with any of these stupid ideas.

Give the man a chance. He won the election. He didn't become a billionaire without using his head.

Just to be sure, google the debt clock for any U.S. state you choose then compare it to Ontario's debt. Maybe this is a clue to why this government is "acting" (read taxing)on carbon.

Monday, 21 November 2016

Forget Scotland. She will have her hands full with Brexit and a role within the EU.

If there are any Americans with decency, hope and character, they are going to be in for a far ruder awakening than that which has occurred since November 8.

The man who lives in a gilded tower in New York City, and is likely to spend more time within it than in the White House, seems intent on ruling via executive order and Tweet. So far that is the order of the day.

His initial appointments, Chief of Staff, Chief Strategist, Attorney General, CIA Director and National Security Advisor are enough to blanche the skin off an almond. They are all photographed with mouths agape.

He still has a few more surprises with which to bomb his citizens and the world.

There are 640,000,000 acres of federal land that might be slated for fossil extraction or other desecration, complete ignorance of climate change and the environment even though parts of Florida recently flooded with the advent of the great moon.

His overtures to Russia are childish. That country and its "muscular" president are a game. What is Reality TV in international geopolitics is China, a country with four times the population of the US. The Chinese president has made some statements in the past few days about honouring the massive agreement recently reached by some 200 countries relating to global warming and greenhouses gases. This is the only country with the raw power to force Trump back into his cage.

Sunday, 20 November 2016

Through the kindness of friends, I receive the New York Times Briefing every morning.

I've weaned myself from CNN.

Reading takes more time than listening but I can be selective. I get the Guardian Briefing on Brexit once a week as well. British pols are so open, so ridiculous as to be downright comical.

Boris Johnson, former Lord Mayor of London, now has a role in Brexit. He is a character straight out of Monty Python.

Brexit is no closer today than it was the day of the referendum. I said that at the time. But they needed a Superior Court to tell them a referendum is not a government decision.

The upcoming transition in the White House is covered in NYT and I still watch Charlie Rose's evening program. Last night's guest, a New York Times editor said there should be no rush to normalize the current situation. The President-elect, in the character revealed, is unthinkable.

Tom Friedman was Charlie's guest this evening .

He has a new book out.

He is not sanguine either.

It's late but it's the only glimmer of hope on a deep dark horizon.

I still can't talk about the recent election. And I can't move past it.

I make comments on Facebook. Short responses to specific comments are not that hard.

They ease the pressure.

Still, the blog awaits

I've started and abandoned repeatedly.

Ramifications of the American election are so horrendous in so many respects, I'm not sure any essence can be captured.

As days turn into weeks, nothing emerges to cast a light on the future.

Since August 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri , in America , things just keep getting worse.

Wednesday, 16 November 2016

I have made a determined effort not to think about the American Presidential Election.i content myself making comments to Facebook.

People are appalled .

Protests are being held

Nought can be done about it.

I think people should just be quiet and watch how the story evolves. It's not over yet and It's certain, with the motley crew part-time in the White House, things will not go according to the plan advanced.

I watched a protester with a rainbow flag and felt exasperation. Why do they always think it's all about them .

First it was about right to marry the love of their choosing. Then it was about adopting children.

Now it's about bisexuals and transvestites and non-gender specifics and the use of public washrooms.

How many more permutations are they likely to present ?

I thought about my childhood in Scotland . Admittedly a long time ago. Boys who were different were called Jessies or Mammy's big tumshies. In England, Nancy-boys or Mamma's boys. Girls who were different, dressed in masculine style, trudged about like boys and were referred to as Tom-boys.

Not much was made of it. No connection to sex. Sex was a very private matter. People blushed in those days at an inadvertent reference.

It's now fifty years since the sexual revolution that came with the birth control pill. Women became stand-up comedians. Parents put fourteen year old daughters on the pill. Nothing remains that can't be openly discussed. A person can choose to have one child or none ,according to a personal schedule.

The Pill messes with hormones. Only girls take it. After a while problems emerged. Children were not be so easily begotten as once thought. Young women suffered sudden death from blood clots. Cancer shows no sign of disappearing.

Homosexuality , lesbianism, bi-sexuality,transvestisism and who knows how many permutations in between, are held to be the norm.

The drug industry Is unlikely to make a connection with the lucrative, hormone shifting birth control pill

and the last several generations of humanity know nothing different.

The scientific community recently pondered why Neanderthals became extinct after inbreeding with humans.

After the recent election, I'm not sure there's any weight whatsoever to the veracity of that theory.

Until the new president's supporters realise the advanced plans are not likely to be realised ,I recommend we all just lie back and think of Scotland.

Third grade primary school in Scotland more than eighty years ago was First Communion Class.

According to Church teaching,children reached the "age of reason ". At seven we could tell right

from wrong.

My birthday was in December. I was a few months shy of the requisite age when I started learning about the Sacraments.

Baptism was first. The message was firm:

"Unless a man is born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven".

We learned an infant, born with the stain of original sin, deceased before christening could never see the Face of God. Limbo was the place for throw-aways.

It struck me as less than fair but at six you don't argue with the teacher. Especially a nun. Priests and nuns enjoyed superior status.

My sister trained as a nurse in her teens. She worked full shifts for less than pocket money. Was required to attend lectures and pass hefty tests over a period of three years. At the end, she was allowed to wear a special cap and badge of registration and still work for next to nothing.

When Kathleen came home,she passed on what she learned from lectures. Years later,I recalled lectures she didn't, to her great exasperation.

A choice tidbit was how in mediaeval times, French priests put dirty hands inside a mother's body to administer the Sacrament before delivery.

I would be sixteen then. I was not impressed.

Reading was a large part of my life. Much of it,after the war, about fascism and how it took hold in Europe.

Hitler took a page from the teaching manual of Holy Mother Church. Children learned fascism from earliest years. They were encouraged to report parents if anything disloyal to the concept was heard at home.

Hitler's Youth were magnificent physical specimens. Tall, fair, well fed, daily physical exercise, summers at the farm, marching ,singing; as close to automatum as possible for humans to be.

At war's end, allied soldiers were shooting children of fourteen,taken from their classrooms,

put into uniform, given a gun and sent to the Russian front. Russians didn't take prisoners. They

hung them from tree branches in the forest.

In final irony, Hitler married his mistress then committed suicide in a bunker.

Mussolini had a different fate at the hands of his countrymen.

The church has changed it's teaching since then. Now they hold that life begins at conception. Abortion is murder. A woman's right to choose is not an option.

What I learned when I was six is history. Seldom mentioned.

The deaths of six million Jews in Nazi death camps in Poland and Austria are history.